1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication equipment that performs scheduling for a communicating party (allocation of a communication resource region), or more particularly, to communication equipment that performs scheduling satisfactorily.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, a radiocommunication system in which the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) method is used to perform radiocommunication between wireless base station equipment (base transceiver station) and terminal equipment has been implemented.
When the OFDM access technique is employed in transmission from the wireless base station equipment to the terminal equipment over a downlink, the wireless base station equipment schedules transmitted data and allocates a frequency range, which is defined on a frequency axis and over which high radiocommunication quality is attained, to the data. Thus, a throughput can be upgraded.
Data to be communicated includes, for example, real-time data (RTD) and non-real-time data (nRTD). The real-time data falls into small-volume real-time data and large-volume real-time data.
To be more specific, the small-volume real-time data having a real-time property, that is, a property that it should be processed in real time includes Voice over IP (VoIP) data. The large-volume data having the real-time property includes streaming data. Moreover, non-real-time data that does not have the real-time property includes file data to be downloaded. For example, data of an image file is large-volume data.
Refer to a patent document (JP-A-2003-259447) and a non-patent document (“3GPP TS” (36.211, V1.1.0, 2007-05)).
However, the foregoing scheduling poses a problem described below.
For example, assuming that scheduling is performed with priority given to terminal equipment (user), for which high radiocommunication quality is attained, in order to upgrade a throughput, when RTD and nRTD coexist, if the nRTD ensures higher radiocommunication quality than the RTD does, the nRTD is scheduled as a top priority. This brings about a possibility that no frequency band is allocated to the RTD. The real-time property of the RTD is impaired.
Moreover, when large-volume RTD ensures higher radiocommunication quality than small-volume RTD does, the large-volume RTD is scheduled as a top priority. This brings about a possibility that no frequency band may be allocated to the small-volume RTD. The real-time accessibility guaranteed for many users who access the small-volume RTD may be impaired.
In contrast, when small-volume RTD ensures higher radiocommunication quality than large-volume RTD does, if the small-volume RTD is frequency scheduled, although the volume of data to be transmitted is small, associated control information is also transmitted. Consequently, an overhead for the control information may increase, and the use efficiency of an uplink (or a downlink) may be degraded.
As control information to be transmitted over a downlink from wireless base station equipment to terminal equipment, for example, information on allocation of a communication resource region (for example, a resource block) is notified. As control information to be transmitted over an uplink from the terminal equipment to the wireless base station equipment, for example, information on release of a communication resource region (for example, a resource block) is notified.